Multi-function peripherals (MFPs), such as those manufactured and sold by Ricoh Corporation, are capable of performing a variety of different functions relative to paper documents. Such MFPs typically are capable of scanning documents, printing documents, copying documents, stapling documents, punching holes in documents, storing digital copies of scanned documents, etc.
Some MFPs even have the built-in capability to perform automatic processing of the digital copies of the documents that they scan. U.S. Pat. No. 7,769,249 (issued Aug. 3, 2010), assigned to Ricoh Company, Ltd., describes a document optical character recognition (OCR)-implementing device. The device includes a reading part that is configured to read a document and form a recognition image. The device additionally includes an obtaining part that is configured to perform image processing of the recognition image. The device additionally includes OCR engines that are configured to perform a character recognition process on the recognition image. Unfortunately, automatically performed OCR processing is prone to errors, and the results are often unsatisfactory to users.
The approaches described in this section are approaches that could be pursued, but not necessarily approaches that have been previously conceived or pursued. Therefore, unless otherwise indicated, it should not be assumed that any of the approaches described in this section qualify as prior art merely by virtue of their inclusion in this section.